Renaming the Retard-o-Tron™

For years, your Curmudgeon has been assisted in his efforts by our Retard-o-tron™. With its blaring sirens and flashing lights, augmented by its blinking wall displays, it alerts us to the presence of particularly crazed creationist articles. It even conveniently locks our computer onto such things, so we can’t do anything until we examine what it has found.

Alas, we have been informed that the name of our most useful device is, well, it’s distasteful to many of you. We are aghast!

Your Curmudgeon is, as you know, a non-judgmental, sensitive, compassionate, caring-sharing evolutionist, with ooey-gooey feelings and a touchy-feely attitude. We embrace diversity and practice togetherness. We care for the planet. We feel your pain. We are At One with all things. Our fondest hope is that we’ll all get along and everything will be nicey-nicey and fuzzy-wuzzy. That is our Curmudgeonly statement of principle, to which we courageously adhere — except when it might give offense.

Therefore, it grieves us to learn that our Retard-o-tron™ — by its very name — has been giving unintended offense. We are determined to remedy the situation. But we’re having difficulty deciding upon a new name. We thought of calling it “The Device With No Name,” or maybe even the “Niceness Meter.” Then other suggestions started to pour in.

This is difficult for us. A Curmudgeon tends to get set in his ways, and the Retard-o-tron™ has been an indispensable aid to our mission. We have been satisfied not only by its function, but by its very appearance when mentioned in our humble blog, with its distinctive typeface and subtle lavender hue. Nevertheless, we recognize that we must change with the times — at least a little bit.

Therefore, dear reader, be assured that the device will be renamed. We don’t yet know what it will be called, and for that reason we welcome your suggestions.

“B…Detector” would be a good name if the lights and sirens went off for all anti-evolution activists and their trained parrots (e.g. writers of all that “wisdom” in letters-to-the-editor). But this only goes off for WND. Which is even regularly ridiculed by the most well-known Discoveroid, Michael Medved. Discoveroids wish that WND would go away, so if anything, WND helps us any time they whine about evolution. “Useful Idiot-o-Tron” would be appropriate, but if people are offended by “retard” they’ll probably be offended by “idiot” too.

“Buffoon-o-Tron” would also be appropriate, but “Buffoon” awards have not been limited to WND activists. Back to the drawing board…

The news flashes and pronouncements of Ken Ham et. al might register with SC when they strike” The Unenlightening Rod.” .
The Jester could hold the rod in his hand, with bolts of electricity rising up from the ground (from the depths of ignorance).

Risking a double entry I was trying to think of a word that would be naturally offensive but not PC offensive but really offensive and representing the most offensive aspects of the human species. Think, think and I came up with:

Kling-o-Tron

Kling represents tard that doesn’t come off with casual wiping, but remains a stench no matter how much Johnsons and Johnsons powder you use. Something really offensive that even Hitler would find offensive. Something that has no possible refuge but the Disco Tute.

The name needs modernization. Everyone knows that the way to do this is to put a lower-case i in front of it. But iRetard-O-Tron might be a bit long-winded and there’s something of an era conflict to it. What about iRetard or iNincompoop?

Dear Curmudgeon..The Prince of Wales yesterday made headlines in the UK after describing climate science deniers as “headless chickens”.
“The Headless Chicken Alarm” could be a rough blueprint for a redesign of the beloved ‘tron to a style less “fowl” but just as entertaining.
Cheers

I googled “psychotron” and got almost 200,000 hits, including a video by someone (or something) called Megadeath, and an entry in Wikipedia on “psychotronics,” the study of parapsychology. So I donno if I should use a term that’s already out there.

While trying to avoid terms that are already in use, I think I’m settling on the concept of an alarm that detects outbreaks of belief systems that advocate reality denial, the promoters of which imagine they have the gift of superior wisdom which enables them to perceive that they dwell in some kind of alternate universe — a contra-cosmic anti-reality domain — perhaps called the Contracosm. That’s a far larger domain of wackiness than creationism, but the alarm system will focus mostly on that. I’m still thinking about a precise term to use.

Keeping up with the latest in Creation Science requires a fundamental understanding of the underlying forces at work. Such study requires examination of highly concentrated stupidity of enormous magnitude – far beyond the capacity of normal instrumentation. For this purpose we have constructed a special instrument, the Large Hamron Collider. A “Hamron” (as I’m sure you are aware) is a composite particle made us of smaller particles (IDions, Creatinos, etc.) held together by the strong force of ignorance (in a similar way as molecules are held together by the electromagnetic force). Hamrons are highly unstable under ordinary conditions of logic and reason, and so the LHC is equipped with highly sensitive sensors to detect the showers of insanity radiating from the original source. Be the envy of every other Curmudgeonly blogger, get your LHC today!

Order today to get a 20% discount!
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Tomato Addict, your Large Hamron Collider sounds like a fine device, but it’s quite primitive compared my alarm system (as yet unnamed). My technology can actually detect exotic particles, called idiotrons, in the Contracosm and then predict when they will be ejected to pollute our own universe.

Well of course! I didn’t have time to go into all the standards options and advanced features. There is a model that automatically write a stunning rejoinder and posts it for you too. It costs a little bit more, but it’s worth it!

I’ve got to resolve this matter this before renaming the thing becomes a full-time career. Everyone’s suggestions have been helpful, and that’s why this is so difficult. But I think it’s best if the new name doesn’t stray too far from the now-familiar original name, thus maintaining tradition and expressing the same opinion about what the device detects.

It will be the Drool-o-tron™. And I’ll probably change the color of its typeface from lavender to mucus green.

We understand your concerns about security, Curmy, but I think it no secret that the fabled CITADEL (Curmudgeonly Institute for Tactics, Advocacy, and Defense of the Enlightenment Legacy) in fact contains many subterranean bunkers absolutely bristling with a vast array of surveillance and monitoring devices.

How else, for example, were you able to hack into the Creationist Can-Cam network?

Ogee, I think, makes a rock-solid point. It’s very much in our human and social natures not to cause gratuitous offence or undue distress in others without sufficient provocation. We are overly sensitive to the sensibilities of our fellows, often at the expense of speaking forthrightly. If some people are going to be offended by terminology that just a few minutes’ discerning effort will reveal not to be targeted at their own or their loved ones’ cerebral infirmities then the needle of the Retard-o-tron is twitching in a narrow band in their direction. It’s easy to be offended; it’s far harder to fathom why, or that the offence exists only in your head because you read an emotive word that strikes a responsive chord with your own experiences.

On the strength of the above, I’ll cast my vote for leaving the name exactly as it stands: Retard-o-tron. Bold purple typeface, trademark, blaring stridency and all its associated magnificence.

That is not to say that this hasn’t been a most entertaining curmudgeonly episode.

That is to say: This blog is about ridiculing and mocking the mental retardation inherent in the notion of denying science and its findings by individuals whose brains are otherwise perfectly functional. If you can’t separate yourself from that group and feel offended by being lumped into the same group of retards, then perhaps it’s you that has the problem.

I shall continue my pursuit of high-stupidity physics with the Large Hamron Collider

This is very encouraging news, and I look forward to reading your findings! If you have any problems getting published in reputable peer-reviewed journals of note, no problem: with some desktop publishing, we can launch our own captive journal, or something 🙂

A journal – brilliant idea. It could be along the lines of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, and it would no doubt attract submissions from the great laboratories of the world, such as the Addict’s!

I think it should stay as is. I suppose it is typically interpreted as school yard bullying “retard” but really it could be interpreted as those who would retard progress and scientific knowledge. No more offensive than say fire retardant, correct? A curmudgeon will tell you what it is possibly as tactless as possible. So don’t give in to political correctness, it is your blog after all call it what you want. You can’t please everyone, so why try?

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